Clément Viktorovitch returns every week to the debates and political issues. Sunday, November 19: the “Saint-Denis Meetings”, which brought together, on Friday, the leaders of certain political parties around Emmanuel Macron.
Let’s start, once in a while, with a little history. In 1965, the President of the French Republic, General de Gaulle, entered into conflict with the European Commission. He opposed several reform projects of the European Economic Community, which would have strengthened supranational integration to the detriment of Nation States. General de Gaulle then decided, quite simply, to boycott European bodies. Since, at the time, votes had to be decided unanimously, it was enough for France not to be represented for the entire European decision-making process to be blocked. After six months of standoff, General de Gaulle finally won his case.
This is what gave its name to the “empty chair policy”: refusing to show up at an event, to prevent decisions from being made there – or, at the very least, to undermine its legitimacy.
This is what is happening today with the Saint-Denis matches, but not always for the same reasons. The Socialist Party and La France insoumise notably highlight their desire not to endorse a meeting in which the possibility of broadening the scope of the referendum to social issues was discussed – first and foremost, and this was explicitly mentioned, the immigration issues. As for Eric Ciotti, on the other hand, he justified his defection by the absence of Emmanuel Macron at the march against anti-Semitism. Why not ? Perhaps we can also imagine that the head of the Republicans was above all looking for a pretext to reaffirm his membership in the opposition, at a time when the LR senators have just voted on the immigration law presented by the government.
The legitimate and constitutional place for this dialogue exists: it is Parliament
We can deplore, in a democracy, that political leaders refuse to dialogue. The whole problem is the framework in which this dialogue takes place. If the objective is for political groups to compare their points of view, to try to identify points of convergence, in order to develop compromises which can be adopted by a transpartisan majority. But there already exists a perfectly suitable place: it’s called Parliament! This was also the initial promise of Elisabeth Borne’s government: to propose a “new method” to the Assembly, in order to build majorities. We have clearly seen what this new method actually consisted of: the divisive texts were adopted without a vote, sometimes even without discussion, by the sole grace of article 49.3.
The government explains that it is because of the obstruction, but that is the chicken and the egg: is it because of the obstruction that there was no real deliberation? Or, on the contrary, is it because the government never wanted to give in anything that the opposition deputies ended up resolving to obstruct?
What seems particularly problematic to me is to see the Head of State multiplying the institutions created from scratch, around his person, to serve the political needs of the moment. Today, it is the “Saint-Denis” format. But yesterday, it was the National Council for Refoundation; during the Covid crisis, the Health Defense Council; during the “yellow vest” crisis, the Great National Debate… So many spontaneous and ephemeral inventions which, not only have, for the majority of them, in no way influenced the government’s decisions, but moreover, contribute to marginalize what should be THE place of democratic deliberation: parliamentary assemblies.
Institutional imbalance
The Constitution of the Fifth Republic, that of General de Gaulle, never provided for the President of the Republic to directly negotiate the nation’s policy with party leaders, in the secrecy of a meeting room! Article 20: this is the role assigned to the Prime Minister, in an official and transparent framework: that of Parliament.
All this is not trivial. Among all the democracies in the world, the Fifth Republic is already one of those which gives the most power to the head of state, and the least weight to Parliament. With his “Saint-Denis” format, Emmanuel Macron further accentuates this imbalance, for his own benefit, and in defiance of the Constitution. If he were still in this world, General de Gaulle himself would perhaps have considered this as sufficient reason to resolve… to the policy of the empty chair.